Saving the Wall: The Conservation of Hadrian’s Wall 1746 - 1987

This book tells the story of the conservation of Hadrian’s Wall, from the construction of General Wade’s Military Road in the eighteenth century to the designation of the Wall as a World Heritage Site in 1987. The first part of the book describes the attempt to protect the Wall via private ownership in the form of the Clayton estate and the imminent threat of destruction that followed the break-up of that estate. The campaign that led to the 1931 Ancient Monuments Act - especially formulated to deal with the threat to the Wall - is illuminated here, as is the subsequent protection of the Wall by means of the Wall and Vallum Preservation Scheme (prototypical of today’s national parks). In the book’s second part, the post-war conservation work of Charles Anderson is described and discussed - with the help of numerous photographs that were taken at the time, with great foresight, by Anderson himself. The book will be of interest not only to scholars of the Wall, but also to anyone interested in the history of conservation.